Rodric Braithwaite > Quotes

“Russia is a country with unpredictable past.”
― Rodric Braithwaite, Russia: Myths and Realities: The History of a Country with an Unpredictable Past

“The Russians are fascinating, ingenious, creative, sentimental, warm-hearted, generous, obstinately courageous, endlessly tough, often devious, brutal and ruthless. Ordinary Russians firmly believe that they are warmer-hearted then others, more loyal to their friends, more willing to sacrifice themselves for the common good, more devoted to the fundamental truth of life. They give the credit to the Russian soul as broad and all embracing as the Russian land itself. Their passionate sense of Russia's greatness is paradoxically undermined by an underlying and corrosive pessimism and it is tempered by resentment that their country is insufficiently understood and respected by foreigners.”
― Rodric Braithwaite, Russia: Myths and Realities: The History of a Country with an Unpredictable Past

“It was perfectly clear that Afghanistan was not ripe for socialism: religion was a tremendous force, the peasants were almost completely illiterate, the economy was backward. Lenin had set out the necessary elements of a revolutionary situation. None were present in Afghanistan.”
― Rodric Braithwaite, Afgantsy: The Russians In Afghanistan, 1979-1989

“Russians like the rest of us prefer to believe that their history has progressed in a straight and positive line. They explain away troubling events such as brutal reigns of Ivan the Terrible or Stalin as necessary stages on the path to greatness.”
― Rodric Braithwaite, Russia: Myths and Realities: The History of a Country with an Unpredictable Past

“But the glimmer of hope in Russia was not entirely extinguished by the atavism of the Putin years. The Japanese reinvented themselves in the 19th century and again after 1945, the Germans, the Spaniards and the Italians experimented with dictatorship and abandoned it. French, Spanish, German and Swedish armies terrorised Europe for centuries, then decided they preferred peace after all. The other Europeans gave up their empires and turned instead to liberal democracy. Only the most obstinate historical determinist would insist that Russians were uniquely incapable of shaking themselves free of the burden of history. By the 3rd decade of the 21st century Russian was already different from what it had been in Soviet times, it's huge size diminished by jet aircraft, modern communications and the internet. Its people by previous standards urban, educated, comparatively prosperous, free to travel, surprisingly well-informed, determined optimists might even hope that the shock of the Ukraine war would change the way Russians look at their past and perhaps make them more open to a different and more constructive future. One thing only was sure, Russia's future would be shaped by the Russian people themselves, regardless of the hopes, fears and wishful thinking of foreigners.”
― Rodric Braithwaite, Russia: Myths and Realities: The History of a Country with an Unpredictable Past

“whom we betrayed and sold down the river when we left Afghanistan, leaving them and their families to the mercy of the victors.”
― Rodric Braithwaite, Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89

“Tanks could not solve what was essentially a political problem. If the revolution in Afghanistan could only be sustained with Soviet bayonets, that was a route down which the Soviet Union should not go.”
― Rodric Braithwaite, Afgantsy: The Russians In Afghanistan, 1979-1989

“Some of my other judgements were sadly wrong. Russia has not yet lost its imperial itch. Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine has postponed for many decades the prospect that Russia will become the modern democratic state at peace with its neighbours, which so many courageous Russians had fought so hard to create. But no people should ever be written off beyond redemption. I hang on to the golden image of the firebird which fleets through the dark forests of the Russian folklore to symbolise the hope that Russia will see better days.”
― Rodric Braithwaite, Russia: Myths and Realities: The History of a Country with an Unpredictable Past

“The Russians are fascinating, ingenious, creative, sentimental, warm-hearted, generous, obstinately courageous, endlessly tough, often devious, brutal and ruthless. Ordinary Russians firmly believe that they are warmer-hearted than others, more loyal to their friends, more willing to sacrifice themselves for the common good, more devoted to the fundamental truths of life. They give the credit to the Russian soul, as broad and all-embracing as the Russian land itself. Their passionate sense of Russia’s greatness is paradoxically undermined by an underlying and corrosive pessimism. And it is tempered by resentment that their country is insufficiently understood and respected by foreigners.”
― Rodric Braithwaite, Russia: Myths and Realities: The History of a Country with an Unpredictable Past